"It was a good opportunity for them to strike back in the propaganda field. Perhaps they want to present the situation (...) as if we are the same as they are, which is not true," the minister told BNS.

"I'm not at all surprised that we received that note. Of course, we will respond to it and will explain that nothing really happened there. But the fact that they reacted to these reports does not surprise me at all," he said.

Linkevičius said that Belarus thus reacted to media reports about an incident "that did not actually occur".

The 15min.lt news website reported on Monday that the incident had occurred during the so-called hot tests in late 2017.

Reportedly, it turned out while moving radioactive waste out of old storage facilities into new ones that the radioactivity level of the waste was higher than estimated. If the waste were loaded into casks, as planned, a certain reaction could have occurred.